POST OFFICE ROBBERY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18641, 23 February 1924, Page 12 (Supplement)

POST OFFICE ROBBERY.

STRANGE PARIS MYSTERY. A remarkably - daring- theft is reported to have taken place at the Paris General Post Office. The chief clerk in the Cashier's Department, ~M. Legrandj had just tiedup in a' bag and left on his office table a -collection of 200,000 francs worth of 1000 franc banknotes destined: for use at one of the branch offices in the city when he left the room. On returning a few minutes after he was astounded to find that the bag had disappeared. The only other person in the room at the time was' a subordinate clerk .who was at"; work at a" table a few yards from the ?iag and could easily see it by merely turning his head. This man stated that he neither heard nor saw? anybody enter the rctom daring his chiefs brief absence, but he admitted that he was busil/ writing all the time. . . ■ . " The bag containing the notes was placed On a table.. to await the arrival of a confidential messenger whose duty it was to oonvey it by motor-car to the office for which C the notes were intended j but this man had not arrived when the chief cleVk discovered his loss. _ , , « The mystery was rendered all the deeper by the met that each end of the interior corridor which leads . from the public' portion of . the-, great post . office building to the room whence the notes disappeared, is shut off by-steel grating doors which are fitted with a mechanism the secret of which is known only to the personnel of the department. The facts were immediately reported to the police, and the theory was entertained that the theft was carried out by some person who had made a long study of the promises and had daringly, entered the room in question attired in the uniform of the postal: service. , V ■;/